Rameau/Handel: 1739, a remarkable year

Rameau (1683–1764): Dardanus suite (1739)
(and arias from Castor et Pollux and Naïs)
Handel (1685–1759): Song/Ode for St Cecilia’s Day (1739)

We often use the blanket term “Baroque music” to cover 150 years of music from all over Europe. We should really use the plural to talk about Baroque music, if only because this period witnessed the blossoming of a number of spheres of influence—Italy, France, England, and Germany, to name but a few. The works in this program are proof of this: Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Dardanus and George Frideric Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day were both composed in 1739, but they show us two completely different aspects of Baroque music.

We would nonetheless be mistaken to think of these spheres of influence as separate universes. Musicians and scores were constantly on the move, and the musical development of each country was profoundly affected by foreign influences.

Rameau started composing operas late in life, but he successfully took over from glorious but declining predecessors such as Campra, Destouches, and Montéclair. Coming after Hippolyte et Aricie (1733) and Castor et Pollux (1737), Dardanus marks the first climax of Rameau’s operatic composition, which he then left aside for six years. What is remarkable is that the scoring of the French tragédie lyrique comes from Lully, who originally hailed from Italy, and with Rameau, the French scoring for five parts gradually gave way to the four-part scoring which was current in Italy. Rameau’s scoring nonetheless has an identity of its own, with its special colors: the top lines shared with the oboes; the use of special instruments such as hautes-contres and tailles de violons; daring scoring choices (flutes, violins, and bass for “Calme des sens,” and flutes and violins alone for the “Gavotte vive”); and an increasingly important solo role for the bassoon. 

Across the English Channel, Handel had become the emblem of English music despite having been born in Saxony and profoundly influenced by Italian and French music. By 1739, his operatic career was more or less over, and he turned to a new genre—the oratorio—which was to immortalize him for posterity. The Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day belongs to a twofold English tradition: on the one hand that of occasional odes and anthems, frequently composed to glorify the art of music; and on the other the feast of St. Cecilia’s Day, which had been celebrated every year since 1683. It is impossible not to draw a parallel with Purcell’s 1692 Ode to St. Cecilia: both find the choir playing a large part, alternating with vocal solos; the instruments described in the text are charmingly depicted in the music—cello, flute, trumpet, lute, and organ succeeding one another. Music organizes primordial chaos into a structured world.

Our aim here is to use a key year in the lives of two composers on either side of the English Channel to show how cosmopolitan the musical world was in the early 18th century.